What is Harappa History?

The Indus Valley Civilization (the Harappan Civilization or the Indus Civilization or the Indus River Valley Civilization) is one of the earliest civilizations in the world. The civilization flourished around the Indus River basin and its tributaries consisting of present day Pakistan and northwest India.

In India the largest Harappan site is located in Haryana Rakhigarhi, and the second largest is in Dholavira, Gujarat. Construction of well-planned cities by using bricks, and proper drainage system are the main features of this civilization.

At the time of its height, the Indus Valley Civilization geographically extended to Egypt or Mesopotamia. On the basis of archaeological research and radio carbon dating, origin of the Indus Valley Civilization lies between 3300 – 1300 BCE.

The Mesopotamian scribes had been writing about a distance place called Meluhha. Archaeological evidence has proved that Indus Valley civilization and Mesopotamians were having long time trade relations.

Evidence suggests that the people of Indus Valley Civilization loved games and toys. During excavation, archaeologists found more and more of toys and they assumed that most of the inhabitants of this civilization were children.

Though people used to live on the banks of the Indus River before this period but it was only during a Bronze Age when they actually started living as civilized and urban societies. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were the two prominent cities of Indus Valley Civilization.

Flat stones with engraved grid markings and playing pieces have been found, which shows that the Indus people may have played an early form of chess. Dice cubes with six sides and spots have also been found by archaeologists, which suggest that they may have invented the dice too.

The final blow seems to have been sudden, but the city was already dying. As the evidence stands, the civilization was succeeded in the Indus valley by poverty-stricken cultures, deriving a little from a sub-Indus heritage but also drawing elements from the direction of Iran and the Caucasus—from the general direction, in fact, of the northern invasions. For many centuries urban civilization was dead in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent.

During the British Rule in India, British engineers were constructing the railway track from Karachi to Lahore. When they felt shortage of materials to raise the track up to the desired level, they collected bricks from nearby ruins of Harappa to build the track. They laid down the bricks and constructed 93 miles (150 km) of railway track using these 4000-year-old artifacts!

The Indus Valley Civilization had a total population of over five million. Most of its people were artisans and traders. Merchants were very wealthy and given extra political powers.

In the south, however, in Kathiawar and beyond, the situation appears to have been very different.

Although the use of grid pattern in town planning is attributed to the Greek urban planner Hippodamus (5th Century BC), the first grid planned cities were thousands of years older than that of Miletus. Almost all the Indus Valley cities were designed in a grid pattern with streets crossing at right angles.

Mohenjo-daro is the largest site and Allahdino is the smallest site of the Indus Valley Civilization.

There it would seem that there was a real cultural continuity between the late Indus phase and the Copper Age cultures that characterized central and western India between 1700 and the 1st millennium BCE.

The main streets followed North-South direction and East-West direction was followed by secondary streets. Forming perfect right angles, intersection of streets took place at junctions.

Mohenjo-daro is the largest site and Allahdino is the smallest site of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Those cultures form a material bridge between the end of the Indus civilization proper and the developed Iron Age civilization that arose in India about 1000 BCE.

These cities had spacious roads, especially in Mohenjo-Daro, roads were as wide as 10.5 m. It is believed that most of the activities like market etc. were held along these streets which justify the widths very appropriately.

Towns were laid down in a rectangular pattern. Most of the houses were two-storey and very spacious. Town planning is a unique feature of the Indus Valley Civilization. There were well built granaries, citadels, burial grounds and bathing platforms.

Not only the Harappan cities were well-planned, but also they followed a level of standardization that no other ancient culture could achieve at that time. Nearly all the cities that are discovered were constructed in a similar pattern.

The towns used to have great baths. Though the exact purpose of baths is not clear but it is believed that these might be used for religious bathing.

Town planning was not limited to cities alone, every town, village and city had the same grid pattern and every house constructed used the same bricks, which were of a particular dimension. The bricks were same for all the houses. They all had sophisticated water management systems.

Harappa is known to be a 4700 years old city in the subcontinent which was discovered around the time 1920. Soon after the discovery of cities like Lothal, Dholavira, Mohenjodaro, and Kalibangan have also been discovered and were come to be known as the Harappan cities or also the advent of Harappan Civilization.

Brick lined sewers is another very prominent feature of the Indus Valley Civilization. Mohenjo-daro is the most prominent of all cities of the civilization with respect to sewerage system. Bricks used in construction were built in the ratio of 4:2:1 having 11 inches length, 5.5 inches width and 2.75 inches depth.

Given the systematic approach in town planning and level of sophistication achieved by the Indus Valley people, scholars believed that even though these cities had very dense population, they were not chaotic. Instead, they had a very organized way of living.